


porcelain & snow

by kinaesthetic



Series: our tiny mountain cottage [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambigious Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, also they have a dog, and gets domestic, basically qualifies as fluff honestly, small trigger warning for extreme cold-seeking as a method of coping, spiderbyte goes to ground in a tiny mountain cottage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 07:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12316200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinaesthetic/pseuds/kinaesthetic
Summary: It's been over half a year since Sombra defected from Talon with Widowmaker. It's been three months since Amélie and Sombra took up residence in a tiny cabin in the French Pyrenees. Two months since they got their dog. Three weeks since the first snow. Five hours since they fell asleep in their bed, snoring softly.Thirty seconds since Sombra woke up to a drafty, empty bed.





	porcelain & snow

It’s the draft that wakes Sombra, snaking its way underneath two cotton quilts and a thick fleece throw to caress her bare legs. She hisses sleepily, arm snaking out of her cocoon to tug the gap closed. Curling into a tighter ball, she ignores the influx of digital information that always floods her mind after waking and tries to get back to sleep.

Moments before she falls asleep again, she processes why she’d been woken in the first place. The ex-hacker throws out an arm and feels behind her. There’s no other body in this bed beside her own and her teddy’s.

She sits up and casts her gaze around the moonlit room. Not at the desk or in the armchair or in the window seat. A flick of her fingers brings up the security feeds around their little cottage. All the rooms are dark and even the infrared settings don’t provide any extra information, except that Olive has chosen to sleep on the couch instead of her dog bed.

The outside cameras only reveal the expanse of snow around the property, evergreens heavy with wet snow, and huge snowflakes still falling. Sombra dismisses the screens and swings her legs over the side of the bed. As she shoves her feet into slippers, she considers the scenarios. The clock reads just after three in the morning. There are no signs of struggle. On the other side of the bed, there’s only cold empty sheets and a pair of abandoned slippers. No note.

Yet Amélie had not woken her.

When she reaches the bedroom door, she notices it’s slightly ajar. Her fingers slip through the crack and pull it the rest of the way open. No light’s on in the hallway bathroom. She checks the second bedroom, but it’s dark and pristine, just as it has been for weeks. She feels silly checking the linen closet and even sillier when there’s nothing in it but sheets and towels. Olive looks up from the couch as she enters the den.

“Down, Oli. You know better than that.” Olive slinks off the couch and pads over to Sombra. She noses at her owner’s leg in shame, tail wagging slightly as she receives a couple of absentminded pets. She whines as Sombra continues her search, trailing behind in confusion.

Sombra creeps around the den, checking near the potted plants and behind the couch and in the corner near the TV stand. If the coffee table wasn’t glass, she would check under it too.

The front door is still locked and the spare keys hang on the wall next to the car keys. The view from the kitchen window reveals the car is indeed still in the driveway, covered in several centimeters of snow. Sighing, Sombra crouches down to scratch behind Olive’s floppy black ears, cooing as the dog’s tongue lolls out in bliss.

“Have you seen your other mommy, _chica?”_

The Bernese mountain dog tilts her head and barks softly. Sombra gets to her feet and heads for the back door. The slick sole of her slipper skids on a small puddle of water near the door. Olive sniffs at the water and whines.

Sombra grips her collar and cautiously pulls the door open. At first glance, the backyard looks like the same pine-bordered half-acre that it usually does, blanketed by the heavy snow. But just off to the side of the porch stairs in one of the few blind spots to her cameras, she spots dark hair, dusted with snow.

Olive tries to bound out into the early morning snow, straining against Sombra’s grip. Keen to distract her from Amélie's still form, Sombra grabs a tennis ball from the toy basket on the porch, launches it far into the backyard, then releases Olive’s collar. She doesn’t wait to see the dog plow through the snow; she descends the stairs and approaches the woman next to them.

Seemingly unbothered by the falling snow, Amélie hugs her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them. Her golden gaze looks through Sombra as she passes through her line of sight. She doesn’t blink or move as the younger woman crouches next to her. Sombra shivers as the snow meets her sleep shorts and bare legs. Unsure of where to put her hands, Sombra eventually reaches out to touch Amélie’s fingertips and is startled to find them tinted a familiar pale blue.

“Amé, it’s too cold out. Let’s go back inside.” The snow swallows her whisper so efficiently that Sombra is not sure she’s been heard. Rather than repeat herself, she turns her gaze out to the yard and watches Olive ruin the perfect snow. Its expanse reflects the light of the full moon, rendering the landscape a pale periwinkle. She looks down at Amélie’s hands, at her long pajama pants and thin tank top, the gaunt shadow of her pale face, sickly against the bright snow. Somewhere under the snow are her feet, which likely have begun to revert to their old skin tone as well.

“Amélie-”

“It’s too warm in the bedroom.” Amélie turns her gaze slightly to meet Sombra’s. The ex-hacker shivers at the hollowness there.

“We can turn the heat down some more. I’ll just get another blanket. We can do that right after we make sure you’re not freezing to death.” Sombra places a hand on a pajama-covered knee and tries for a smile. Her teeth are beginning to chatter but she clenches her jaw until they stop.

Amélie turns back to the yard. This time her gaze remains animated, tracking their dog as she bounds through the snow trying to find the ball.

“I could always feel warmth, but I could not feel the cold.” Amélie whispers and for the first time, Sombra notices the tear tracks on her cheeks. “And when I woke, I needed to be sure. _Dans mes cauchemars, je ne sais jamais qui je suis…_ ”

While Sombra translates and then reels at this revelation, Olive dashes over to the pair, tennis ball in her grasp. She tries to bowl over Amélie, succeeding only pushing her further against the porch as she licks her face. The French woman buries a hand in the dog’s fur, ignoring the pressure of the forty kilogram dog on her chest. Sombra doesn’t have the heart to reprimand Olive.

“I think both Olive and I want you to come back inside,” says Sombra softly.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She grips at her forearm where the shadow of a tattoo haunts her.

“I know that. We both do. We know who you are-”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you’re shivering.” Sombra deadpans, frustrated and shaking with cold herself. “You said it best, Amé. Widowmaker didn’t feel the cold. Amélie does, which is why _you’re_ going to catch a cold at best or lose your extremities at worst! Are you going to make me sneak into town for toe prosthetics? Is that what we’ve come to in this relationship?”

Even over Olive’s excited snuffling, she can hear Amélie’s gentle snort. “ _D’accord_.”

“Don’t 'dakkord’ me!” Sombra coughs out the French word and sticks her tongue out at her companion’s disgusted glare. “Get back in the house or I’ll keep going! Uh, ‘jay beswain doo tey sheaud ay-’”

“Sombra, _stop._ ” She pulls Olive's face away long enough to sneer at the other woman.

Sombra stops, content to watch Amélie coo at Olive her native tongue before getting to her feet. Olive leads the return to the cottage, bounding the stairs in two leaps. A powerful wind sweeps through the yard and Sombra tries to shield the taller woman from the worst of the gust as they shuffle back to the porch.

Once inside, Amélie changes into a set of dry underwear and thermals, then dons the pairs of thick gloves and socks that Sombra hands her. She stares at her gloved hands for a long while; Sombra sees her grimace and wags a finger at her, saying: “No prosthetics for you.”

Once she’s properly bundled, Amélie shuffles to the bedroom and crawls under the blankets, only grumbling slightly when Sombra throws yet another blanket on her. A few quiet minutes pass; she watches the snow fall outside, thicker and heavier than earlier. Before long, her fingers and toes begin to tingle painfully as warmth and feeling return to them. It’s a sensation she has not missed, having felt it for weeks after the good doctor Angela Ziegler had begun her treatments to fix her ‘ruined’ body.

Amélie shudders.

A finger snap brings her back to her senses. Half a second later, Olive bounds onto the bed and prances around her bundled lump of a body. The excited dog licks her face and steps on her before turning twice and snuggling up. She cranes her neck to see Sombra close and lock the bedroom door, carrying a huge blanket and a mug of chamomile. She hands the tea over and clambers onto the bed, cocooning herself in the blanket.

With her gloved hands, Amélie sips the tea until she’s settled in before asking, “I thought Olive wasn’t allowed in the bedroom?”

“Special circumstances,” says Sombra, wriggling a hand out of her blanket to wave dismissively and bring up a small screen. “I’ll allow it. Maybe if she’s good and doesn’t hog the blankets this time, it’ll happen more often.”

A small smile blooms on the French woman’s face at the faux gruff expression the other woman wears. Olive woofs happily between them. Another flick of brown fingers and the radio alarm clock begins to play something soft, full of violins and pianos. Amélie keeps her eyes on Sombra as she consults her screens, but the late hour, the chamomile, and the warm blankets have her eyes drooping shut all too soon.

* * *

“Amé, wake up.”

Amélie startles to wakefulness. She stays rigid until she sees Sombra’s concerned gaze, Olive’s black fur, dawn creeping between their dark purple drapes. The other woman waits until she sees the recognition in her eyes, then flips a screen so she can see it.

“Besides the fact that I’d rather you not freeze to death in the snow, it doesn’t actually stay cold all the time up here in the mountains.” Sombra waits for her eyes to adjust to the relative brightness of the screen. Amélie stares at the picture of a blue rectangle on the screen, too tired to process the text around it.

“Of course, we are not in Siberia…but-?”

“It’s an ice-pack. You can keep them in the freezer and whenever you need to make sure you’re _you_ , just go grab it, yeah?” Sombra dismisses the screen, then lays down to face Amélie. “And then come back to bed and talk to me? Or just wake me up? Or go get Olive? Or anything besides sneak outside and sit alone in the freezing cold?”

“That sounds... reasonable.”

“Good. It’ll be here in a couple of days. There’s some frozen peas in the freezer until then, I checked.”

Amélie doesn’t respond. Sombra rolls to her back and stares at the rough, drywall ceiling. They listen to the soft whuffling breaths of their dog.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Sombra murmurs, no hint of heat in her voice.

Amélie flinches regardless. “I know. I am sorry.”

“I don’t want you to apologize.” Sombra can feel golden eyes on her but she continues to stare at the ceiling.

“Then what should I do?”

“Remember that Olive is not the only one who cares about you?”

A beat of silence. “I...I can do that.”

In lieu of a response, Sombra retrieves her teddy bear from the bedside table and rolls over to meet her gaze once more, then closes her eyes to sleep.

Amélie waits until her breathing evens out before whispering, “Thank you for coming to get me.”

Sombra’s breathing hitches just barely, but it's enough that Amélie can rest easy, knowing that she heard.

**Author's Note:**

> brain: what if amelie sometimes sits in the snow to make sure she can feel the cold and isn’t widowmaker  
> me, already writing and crying: what if...you shut up...for once...
> 
> French: dans mes cauchemars, je ne sais jamais qui je suis - in my nightmares, i never know who i am  
> d'accord - okay - also what sombra butchers  
> the second french butchering is 'i need some hot tea and-', spelled as incorrect and phonetically bad as possible  
> Spanish: chica - girl
> 
> thanks for reading my first spiderbyte!! ^^


End file.
